Seven Summers
by Annakovsky
Summary: Seven summers of Xander's life, in short.


SUMMARY: Seven summers of Xander's life, in short.  
  
SPOILERS: The whole shebang, up through Chosen.  
  
RATING: Um, PG-13? Nothing higher than that, anyway.   
  
DISCLAIMER: All characters, settings, universe, etc, belong to Joss Whedon and Mutant Enemy.  
  
ARCHIVING: Probably, but ask first so I know where it is.  
  
FEEDBACK: Please! Send to annakovsky@hotmail.com  
  
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Seven Summers  
  
by Annakovsky  
  
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Summer of 1997  
  
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The last day of July, and he hadn't seen a single vampire since Buffy had left for L.A. Funny how he had never seen a vampire before Buffy had arrived, either.   
  
Late at night like this, lying on his bed in just his boxers because it was too damn hot, moonlight giving his furniture a ghostly look, he wondered if he had just dreamed her. Sure, a cute blond girl had moved here and they had all fought monsters all semester. Sure, vampires existed, and bug-ladies, and living ventriloquist dummies. Sure, his high school was on a Hellmouth. It all made perfect sense.   
  
During the day, when he and Willow were walking around trying to find something to do, he believed in Buffy, in blond hair and strappy sandals and deadly strength. But at night he was sure it was a dream. Because honestly, even granting the vampire premise, why would a girl like that hang out with him and Willow?  
  
It had to be a dream. And how depressing was it that even dream-Buffy wouldn't go out with him? Apparently to his brain a pretty girl agreeing to go to a dance with him was more farfetched than said pretty girl fighting and defeating an Internet demon robot.   
  
Every morning when he woke up he was sure that Jesse would be coming over soon, that they'd eat Freezer Pops out of Jesse's freezer and go to the pool to look at girls. Summers were different without him. Willow's mom only had sugar-free snacks, and Willow hated the pool.   
  
The fact was, Buffy coming had changed everything - and if Buffy hadn't really come, if everything had just changed, then… well, it sucked, was all.   
  
He sat up and stuck his head out the window, hoping that any kind of breeze would cool the sweat on his forehead, move the heavy air around and clear his head. Hoping that Buffy would be back soon. Hoping that there was a Buffy.   
  
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Summer of 1998  
  
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"I just wish we knew what happened," Willow kept saying. "I bet the spell worked, I bet she and Angel are off somewhere together, you know, celebrating." Her voice got less sure every time she said it, with every week that went by with no sign of Buffy. Xander wished she'd just shut up.   
  
He knew Buffy hadn't been stalling for time to let Willow restore the soul. He knew that either Buffy or Angel were dead, and maybe both.  
  
"Kick his ass," echoed in his head over and over. He knew he had been right, that Angel was a murderous bastard and needed to be dead. But as his own words repeated over and over (just before he fell asleep, first thing when he woke up in the morning), they disconnected from their context, from the smell of early morning and the stomach-twisting fear and the feel of the stake in his hand, and he wasn't sure anymore whose ass he had been talking about. Maybe it was his own.  
  
He wished Cordelia were in town so they could yell at each other and then make out. If she were around being infuriating he'd have something else to think about besides "kick his ass" when he was third-wheeling it with Willow and Oz.   
  
One night in August he was grappling with a vamp in the cemetery while the three of them were on patrol.  
  
"Kick his ass!" Willow yelled encouragingly and the bottom dropped out of Xander's stomach. He lost his hold and the vamp was suddenly on top of him, about to bite. Xander didn't seem to have any strength left, his arms like wet noodles, like a bad dream where you're too feeble to lift a coffee cup. He was lying there weakly, ready to die, when Oz staked it.  
  
He choked on vamp dust, tears welling up in his eyes as he coughed. Willow thumped him on the back, hard, but he couldn't stop coughing.  
  
He wondered if Buffy were dead and what it would feel like when he got to Hell.   
  
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Summer of 1999  
  
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"Harris, Tad called in sick and they need another guy out there. Guess tonight's your big break."  
  
This was how Xander became the worst male stripper at the fabulous Ladies' Night Club. He wasn't sure if it would be more humiliating to be a good stripper or a bad one, but it didn't really matter because he was incapable of being anything but terrible. So he matched the club, that way.   
  
The Ladies' Night Club was dingy and dark and ugly. Cheerless. Its depression seemed to have infected the employees too; no one would laugh at his jokes or even acknowledge them. They just stared at him with dead eyes. So eventually he stopped joking, stopped talking altogether. He grimly showed up to work, stripped as best he could and went back to his hotel room, where only one lamp worked and the TV was held together by duct tape.   
  
Some nights he thought he saw Faith in the crowd, dark eyes flashing, laughing. Once he caught a glimpse of red hair out of the corner of his eye and was sure it was Willow. Occasionally he thought he saw Giles, hands in pockets and leaning against the wall, observing quietly with an unreadable expression on his face.   
  
Xander tried to focus on the dingy curtains, anything to avoid looking at the crowd. He pretended he really was on his road trip; the open road his school, yada yada yada. He pictured a highway stretching through the desert, long and empty, just waiting for him to accelerate through. He imagined the sun warm on his left arm, the wind in his hair. He imagined himself in sunglasses, walking around Yellowstone Park, dusty from hiking. Having adventures and impressing girls.   
  
None of his imagined adventures included having to strip for the money to get back to Sunnydale. In his fantasies, he was never paying for Ramen noodles with one dollar bills he'd pulled out of his underwear.   
  
He really was going nowhere.   
  
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Summer of 2000  
  
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Xander couldn't forget the feeling of the adjoining spell, of being one with Buffy and Willow and Giles. For fifteen minutes not being Xander, but this super-person, many in one. Not being alone for once – being part of something. Something better; someone smart and strong and fast and brave. Knowing what it was like to be Buffy and Willow and Giles; knowing them as well as he knew himself.   
  
Even as they were fighting Adam, putting all their concentration into the Sumerian and blocking Adam's attacks, Xander was completely aware of the others, of everything about them. He knew the reason Willow was afraid of frogs, and that Buffy didn't know how she felt about Riley, and that Giles wished he had children. He knew what they regretted and what they'd never told anyone and where they liked to be kissed. They knew him in the same way, deeply; knew everything he'd done or not done or wished or believed.  
  
He and Anya had sex every night in the weeks after the spell. He couldn't get close enough, wanted to be part of her, in her, with her. He made love with a sort of desperation, staring into her eyes and hoping for that moment of deep knowledge, of intimacy, of oneness. But it never came.  
  
As they lay together, sweaty, her curled up on his chest, he was more aware than ever that their skins were like barbed-wire fences, keeping each other out. That no matter how close you got to someone, you were always alone inside your own body.   
  
Watching Anya sleep was so familiar, her profile, the little drowsy noises she made. All as familiar as his own hands. He knew her body better than he knew his own, knew the little scar on her knee, the pattern of freckles on her back. But they were separated by a great gulf of selfhood, and the dark of the room stretched wide between them.   
  
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Summer of 2001  
  
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They had fallen into a nightly ritual, the summer after Buffy died. Xander would come by the Magic Box at closing time to pick up Anya so they could go get dinner or go to the movies. But he would always show up a little early, when he knew she wouldn't be ready yet, still checking inventory and closing up. While he waited for her, he would sit with Giles where he was going over the books; Giles would have his shirt sleeves rolled up and his tie loosened, would look tired and worn down.   
  
Giles was always on the verge of leaving for England, but every day he kept showing up for work, as if he couldn't bear to really leave Sunnydale. As if that would be too much closure, make it all really over. Make Buffy really dead. He had a thousand reasons, a thousand excuses, but everyone knew why he stayed. So the whole long summer, every evening he and Xander would go through their routine.   
  
Sweaty and tired from a day spent working outside, Xander would slump in the seat across from Giles, who would get out the scotch without looking at him.   
  
Xander would watch as Giles carefully poured the liquid into two glasses, a smooth fluid flow swirling as it met the bottom. The glass felt cool in his fingers as Giles handed it to him, heavy and familiar. The late afternoon light filtered through the windows, making the liquid shine while Giles and Xander's faces were in shadow.   
  
Their eyes would meet and hold as they clinked the full glasses together. Giles's eyes looked ancient at these moments, sad and weary. Xander knew his were the same.   
  
"Bad day?" Giles would ask quietly.  
  
"Every day is bad," Xander would reply in an undertone. They would both look down into their glasses, watching the movement of the scotch. Then Giles would nod, and they would drink without speaking.   
  
For all that, they never mentioned her name.   
  
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Summer of 2002  
  
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Five years before, Xander would have killed for a summer like this, just him and Buffy. Movie nights, take-out, dancing at the Bronze, patrolling. With Buffy's kid sister included, of course, but that added to the feeling. Family. Sometimes he and Buffy even got a parental vibe going.   
  
"Xander, do you think Dawn should be out that late?"  
  
"Buffy, you're not going to let her go out wearing *that*, are you?"  
  
But these days, just him and Buffy didn't seem romantic, like his 16-year-old self would have imagined. It felt lonely. Willow and Giles were stilted voices on the telephone (when they could afford the overseas call), awkwardly talking about the weather. Tara was dead. Anya avoided him, and God knew where Spike was. Though that one at least he was grateful for.   
  
He and Buffy talked a lot, nervous chatter to fill the silent spaces in the car and the house. Dawn was overly cheerful, giggling in a way that seemed forced. Except for the times when she was crying.   
  
The blood stain wouldn't come out of Willow and Tara's carpet, despite many Hints from Heloise and visits to Martha's Stewart's website. They scrubbed and scrubbed.  
  
"Out, damn spot," Xander joked, the words out of his mouth before his inner censor (underused, yes, but still present) informed him that it wasn't funny at all. He dipped his head and scrubbed harder, feeling helpless.   
  
Xander and Buffy eventually went to the store, picked out new carpet, debating the pros and cons of light or dark, patterned or plain. The clerk thought they were newlyweds. Xander considered explaining the friends-buying-carpet-to-replace-the-one-their-best-friend's-girlfriend-died-on thing, but decided that, even in Sunnydale, that might be overly disturbing.   
  
The three of them moved all the furniture out of Tara's room and into the hallway, and then pulled the carpet up, rolling it neatly so the bloodstain was on the inside. Xander spent a weekend measuring and cutting and fastening the new carpet down. Buffy brought him lemonade, stood awkwardly in the doorway trying to chit-chat.   
  
They ended up putting the old carpet, with Tara's blood rolled up inside it, out with the trash. They didn't know what else to do with it.   
  
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Summer of 2003  
  
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"The loss of an eye is a traumatic event, but with patience and perseverance, you will be able to perform skillfully almost any function with one eye that you were able to do with two."   
  
Xander was spending his summer at websites with names like www.losteye.com, reading about depth perception and prosthetics.   
  
He wondered if there was a site called www.lostanya.com. He checked. There wasn't. He briefly considered reserving the domain himself, but didn't know what he'd put up.   
  
"The loss of an ex-fiancee is a traumatic event, but with patience and perseverance…"  
  
Your brain eventually adapts, when you lose an eye, so that after awhile you hardly notice any difference. Even in depth perception, the loss is very slight. Life goes on; you're not whole anymore, but you don't miss it.   
  
Everyone talks about healing after a death, after a loss; Xander wondered if it was less like healing and more like learning to live without an eye. You adapt, you become a new, one-eyed person who can cope, but you're not the same, you're not what you used to be.   
  
He was getting used to living in a flat world. To being careful when he went to step on a curb, to extending his hand slowly and letting the other person shake it when he met someone new. He learned to turn his whole head when he looked at something to compensate for his blind spot.   
  
He hadn't yet learned to stop expecting her footsteps, to stop straining to hear her voice when he heard a group talking in the next room.   
  
Willow had downloaded a bunch of Cat Stevens's songs onto her laptop, and he was wearing headphones and listening to her MP3s one day as he read his email. The lyrics suddenly arrested him, and his stomach felt queasy.  
  
"And if I ever lose my eyes, if my colors all run dry,  
  
Yes if I ever lose my eyes, Oh if... I won't have to cry no more."   
  
Xander could definitively state that Cat Stevens was a dirty liar. He wiped ineffectually at his wet cheeks, hoping no one was looking.   
  
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END  
  
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Notes: The quote at the beginning of *Summer of 2003* is from the webpage: http://www.artificialeye.net/depth.htm. Also, www.losteye.com is a real website, and the Cat Stevens song quoted is "Moonshadow". 


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